


Lost Child

by SimiTheTrickster



Series: The Littlest Companion [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Fluff, Involuntary regressions, Littles Are Known, Littleverse, Other, cuteness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 18:49:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16561301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimiTheTrickster/pseuds/SimiTheTrickster
Summary: The Eleventh Doctor takes on a special little ward.





	Lost Child

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know that this probably annoys all you Whovians but like...I love stories featuring Littles, especially fanfics, and I haven't found jack-all for a good Doctor Who story with Littles and I couldn't get this one out of my head, so I decided to write it. Please be kind with your criticisms.

“Doctor, where are we?” Amy asked as the TARDIS touched base on their destination; she’d grown accustomed to asking such questions as there were many a time when the TARDIS seemed to just take them wherever the ship damned well pleased. She made her way towards the door to see for herself, though his response would be more helpful than peering outside would. The Doctor’s response stopped her before she could tug open the door, however.

“A planet called Involutarium Infantilitaxia Regressicorum. Basically translates to ‘Planet of Involuntary Infantilism Regression.’ It’s not a planet I’ve been to before.” The Doctor was fiddling with his console, though Amy knew him well enough to know he was paying attention to things around him as well.

“And why are we here?” Amy was thoroughly confused at this point; the planet sounded like a nursery of some sort. Why would the TARDIS or even the Doctor bring them to a planet full of infants?

The Doctor tossed his psychic paper to Amy, who caught it instantly. “I got a message earlier; I traced the source back to this planet. It’s not often I make a house call! I’m fascinated.” He gave her a bit of a grin as she read the message; ‘Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me! …please…’ is what the message read, though it didn’t make a lick of sense to Amy.

“How do you intend to find the sender of the message? There aren’t really any clues here.” Amy tossed the paper back to the Doctor, who caught it easily and slid it back into his pocket. “Besides, who’s to say the sender needs help?”

That got the Doctor’s attention; the Time Lord frowned at his redheaded companion. “That message basically screams ‘scared child’ and you’re doubting the intent? Oh, Amy, you are silly and jaded. Let’s go explore, shall we?”

Rory had kept silent throughout the entire interaction, but as the Doctor made his way to the door, Rory had to speak up. “Doctor, when you say this planet is of involuntary infantilism regression… what, exactly, does that mean?”

“Well, Rory-“ The Doctor tugged open the TARDIS door and led the way onto the planet. “-it’s a term used for grown individuals who involuntarily regress back to a mental state of infancy and-slash-or child-like tendencies.” The Doctor threw out his arms excitedly as the three of them peered around what seemed like the lobby of a hospital; it smelled like lavender and baby wipes, very much the same as the maternity ward of any earth hospital would.

Amy and Rory were both in awe; from the looks of the hospital, it felt like they were back on Earth, though pictures on the walls revealed they were, in fact, on an alien planet. The Doctor gave them a long stretch to glance around before he got their attention.

“Right, well, as it seems this is a very large institution, I suggest we split up.” The Doctor turned towards a door, a sign above which read, ‘Intensive High Priority’, and gestured towards it. “I’ll take this way.”

“Doctor, wait!” Amy grabbed his sleeve and gently tugged to get his attention. Once she had it, she cleared her throat a bit, “What, ah, exactly are we looking for?”

“Well, a frightened ‘child’, of course.” He said as if it were the most obvious thing ever; to him, it was.

“Well, yes, we get that. But if this planet is a nursery for grown beings that involuntarily regress, then doesn’t it stand to reason that there is trauma and stress behind those regressions? Therefore, wouldn’t that make every single being here, aside from the doctors or nurses or caretakers or what-have-you, a frightened ‘child’ of sorts?” Rory interjected.

The Doctor contemplated this for a long moment before quickly grabbing Rory by the cheeks and yanking him in to kiss him on the lips. “Ah, Mr. Pond, you always surprise me! A good point, a very good point; look for the more frighteneder child, then? That isn’t a word, I’ll never say that again.” He didn’t wait for them to respond before he disappeared through the doors of the ‘Intensive High Priority’ corridor.

Amy and Rory shared a put-upon sigh before disappearing in their own directions, once they made sure they each had their phones on them; it wouldn’t do any of them good if they couldn’t contact one another provided a situation arose.

The corridor the Doctor had disappeared down wasn’t very large; a total of 50 rooms at most, and only half seemed to be occupied. Each room had a two-way mirror attached, with bits of information about the occupying patient inside; as the Doctor moved from room to room, reading the attached charts, he began to feel his efforts were in vain. None of the patients seemed to tug at his gut instincts, which was typically the case with the psychic paper; he very often found the source of the messages by gut instinct, and a small psychic link between said sender and the paper itself.

Slitheens and Silurians, a Sontaran and a Tree of Cheem, Catkinds and even a Hath, but none were what had called out so fearfully that it sent a psychic message. As the Doctor was about to leave the corridor, his eye caught a glance of a doorway that was masking a short hallway from sight, set up to be easily missed. Curiosity got the better of him and he found himself turning down the short hallway.

There was a single room in the hallway, smaller than the rest and occupied by two individuals; a very small and extremely frightened girl, and a nurse attempting to coax the girl from her huddle in a corner of the room, half hidden by a sterile hospital cot. The Doctor glanced at the chart – ‘Species: Unknown, Age: Unknown, Name: Unknown; girl says The Baby’ – but it was incredibly uninformative to him. Below the chart was an intercom switch; one way turned the sound on from both ways, the other way turned the sound on only from the inside of the room to the outside. The Doctor switched it to the left so as to listen to the interaction at the same time as monitor it; his gut instincts told him this was the correct room.

“-has been three days, kiddo. I need to comb your hair, so the choice is yours; you can sit very nicely for me, or you won’t like how I need to do so.” The nurse spoke to the small girl before gesturing to her side; the Doctor followed the movement with his eyes, noticing the second nurse for the first time.

The nurse’s words stirred a reaction from the girl; subtle and small, but it wasn’t missed by the Doctor. The young girl’s breathing quickened, near-silently hyperventilating, and her arms tightened around a stuffed toy.

The Doctor frowned at how the nurses seemed to ignore how the girl reacted, but he seemed frozen in place; his eyes were drawn to the toy the girl clung to. It looked familiar, but in a foreign way; something he must have seen in passing, but even he knew that wasn’t right and yet he was unable to place where he may have seen such a toy.

While the Doctor was lost in his musings, the second nurse had moved forward towards the girl. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me….don’t touch me, PLEASE!” The girl had started by whispering, her voice raising in octaves the closer the nurse got but he seemed to ignore her pleading. In a matter of seconds he had her held to his chest in a bear hug; she was struggling, but it was met with the reaction of a mosquito against flypaper. Even the sharp, high-pitched wailing was ignored as the nurse sat on the floor and trapped her legs in his own.

The first nurse wasted no time in rushing over and ripping a hairbrush through the girl’s curly and wild flyaway hair. The Doctor grimaced at the sound of the brush catching and yanking through the poor kid’s hair; just as he’d made up his mind to go into the room and stop them, he heard Amy calling for him. He quickly poked his head around the corner. “Here!” He called and the moment they noticed him, he pulled back and pushed his way into the room.

Both nurses jumped in surprise and looked up at him as he entered. “Who are you? What are you doing in here?” The first nurse demanded, but the Doctor ignored her questions.

“Can’t you see she’s frightened? You’re hurting her.” The Doctor couldn’t stand to see an innocent soul being harmed the way they were doing.

The first nurse didn’t argue; she looked at the second nurse and nodded lightly, signaling to him to let the small girl go. “I’m done anyways.” She stood and wiped her smock free of wrinkles.

The second nurse released the small girl, who immediately flopped to the floor to continue wailing; the Doctor could practically feel the fear and emotional hurt rolling off of her. He leveled both nurses with a dirty look as he moved over to the young girl and knelt on the floor next to her. In the few seconds since she’d been released, the girl had flung her arms over her head in an attempt to hide her hair; it was effective, as the shirt she was wearing seemed to be about 4 sizes too large for her, the long sleeves seeming more the size of the legs of a pair of trousers as opposed to a shirt.

By the time Amy and Rory made their way into the room, both nurses felt it was time for them to go; it was obvious to them that, at least for now, they wouldn’t be getting any answers as to who these people were and felt it best they go check on other patients in the time being.

“Hey, shh. Dry those tears, little one. You’re okay now, aren’t you?” The Doctor prodded the small girl, but was answered only by a sharp wail which then tapered off into sobs that could make even the most hardened criminal’s heart break. The Doctor felt the need to pet the girl’s hair, but as he’d heard her reaction to the thought of being touched he thought better of doing so.

“Doctor, do you know her?” Rory asked, taking a tentative step forward.

“She’s the one who sent the message.” The Doctor frowned, torn between trying to comfort the small girl and letting her cry herself out; before he had to choose between the two, he noticed the girl’s toy on the floor a couple feet away from where he sat. He’d been too preoccupied to notice before that she’d dropped it, but he noticed now. He leaned over as far as he could and grabbed the toy up before resituating himself next to the small girl.

“Hey, little one… Look, it’s your little friend.” The Doctor said softly, holding the toy above her head and wiggling it a bit to catch her attention. “He looks a little lonely and sad, like you. Maybe you can make him feel all better?”

The gentle prodding worked and the small girl opened her eyes slowly to look up at her beloved toy. The Doctor gave the girl a small smile, at the same moment Amy let out a gasp. “Doctor, those eyes; have you ever seen anything like that before?”

The Doctor handed her the toy before looking back at Amy, who had moved closer to get a better look at the girl’s eyes. “It’s not so rare an eye color, you know. Lots of humans have that eye color.” He stated matter-of-factly, though even he was capsized by the intensity of the small girl’s eyes; they were striking silver in color, seeming to glitter in the light from the tears in her eyes.

As the Doctor opened his mouth to speak again to the small girl he was interrupted. “You three need to vacate this room immediately. I don’t know who you are, or where you came from, but you do not have clearance to be here.”

The Doctor barely thought before he reacted, standing and pulling his psychic paper from his pocket. He presented it with barely any thought, speaking clearly and evenly. “I’m from the health board, I’m here to inspect your facilities and make sure they’re being properly run.”

The head of the hospital took the paper and turned it over before tossing it back to the Doctor. “I don’t know who you think you’re fooling, but that’s psychic paper and there was no inspection scheduled. You need to leave now.”

The Doctor pocketed the paper once more and shrugged, “Ah well, was worth a try.” He cleared his throat and gestured to the small girl still on the floor, whose tears had tapered off to soft sniffles and hiccups. “I’m here to bring her back home with me, as we have been missing her something fierce.”

The hospital director looked entirely unimpressed. “You are, are you now? And do you realize just how long she has been here at our facility?”

“A few years, I’d assume, since she’s been missing quite a while.” The Doctor was just taking a guess, but by the slight reaction from the director he felt he’d guessed fairly right.

“She was found hiding on the human planet, Earth. A couple of my nurses found her, regressed, nearly 10 years ago. So yes, ‘a few years’ is a good assumption. But I do not believe you know her, whatsoever.” The director crossed his arms over his chest and leveled the Doctor with an intense stare. “I doubt you even know her name, age, or even her race, therefore you have no right to take her out of here.”

“She’s the same race as I am, though clearly many years younger than I am. As for her name, well she already gave it to you.” The Doctor’s lip twitched, though he wasn’t as amused as his face might suggest. Amy and Rory shot the Doctor a surprised look, though they kept silent.

“Oh? And just what race would that be, hm?” The director seemed like his patience was wearing more and more thin with each passing moment.

“She’s a Time Lord, clearly.”


End file.
